I have a Sony Reader and I love it 
Yup, someone who didn’t have the publishing rights to the books in question was offering them for sale.
I have a Kindle; I’ve seen the Nook in person but have never used one. Both seem pretty similar. So here’s the best way to choose between them (and it will be different for everyone)
- Make a list of 5 books you’re meaning to read.
- Make a list of 5 books that you’ve read that are your favorites.
Now, check both the Amazon and the B&N Nook store to see which are available in their respective formats.
Whichever does better, I suggest that.
As far as the wireless option- except for downloading books, what else would you do with it? Just curious (and leaning towards Kindle if I can get over my love of the feel of books).
Kindle has the built-in wiki/google ability. I’ve often posted about how we love our Kindles–I got one for Mr. HP when they first came out, and he just got a new Kindle2 because it’s a little more compact than his Kindle1.
Just popped in to say that my high-tech geeky college computer students LOVE…
Books.
They even rhapsodize about the smell of the paper (new vs. used), the feel of cracking it open, carrying it around, ruffling the pages, etc.
Surprised me.
Personally, I think of the loss of bookstores. I would be very sad if I couldn’t just wander aimlessly in a place filled with the smell of books. And honestly, one of the biggest turn offs is that many of the books I would “buy” cost more to download than they would to buy a paperback. What’s up with that? The free classics is good, but I have my library for that.
I’m still on the fence but I’m about to have a nice chunk of change from selling my spring lambs so it’s a possibility.
Oh, don’t mistake me–as much as I like my Nook, I like books better. My personal library is going nowhere, and I’m a regular patron of two local public libraries as well. The Nook allows me to take a huge amount of reading material on trips, and it’s good for freely downloadable material that I want to read but can’t or don’t want to buy physical copies of.
I’ve been looking for the ebook reader that will suit me best too.
Here’s some links I found helpful
http://ebookreadermatrix.com/
http://ebook-reader-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://ebook-reader-review.toptenreviews.com/
I have a Kindle DX and an iPad. Here’s my opinion of how they both stack up as electronic readers.
Device Size/weight/portability - The iPad and the Kindle DX have just about the same dimensions, but the Kindle DX is slightly narrower and thinner, and also weighs noticeably less than the iPad. So I’d say the Kindle DX wins on portability.
Display Size - Because of the width of the device and the lack of physical keypad below the display, the iPad is able to devote more real estate to the display than the Kindle DX. Advantage iPad.
Battery Life - The Kindle DX wins by a mile over the iPad. If I use my iPad every day, I have to charge it every day. I can, and do, use my Kindle for over two weeks at a time without having to charge it.
Reading in bright light/sunlight - The Kindle beats the iPad here, hands down.
Reading in low light/no light - Because of its backlit screen, the iPad can be read in extreme low light conditions without a problem, although you can get a booklight for the Kindle, which I do have, that eliminates this problem.
Eye strain - I experience eye strain when reading on my iPad after a very short period, say 30 to 45 minutes. The screen is doing something, refreshing really quickly, something, and I definitely feel it after a while. I experience little to no eye strain when reading on my Kindle, even after 2 hours. Reading on the Kindle, to me, is just like reading a book. Advantage Kindle.
Image Definition - I have to give this to the iPad. Not only are images full color on the iPad, they’re crisper and seem to be displayed at a higher resolution. The only time this becomes an issue for my Kindle is when I’m viewing technical manuals or journal articles that contain images. The images display on my Kindle, but definition and contrast does suffer.
Book availability - I haven’t spent much time actually reading books on my iPad, other than to compare it to my Kindle, but I wouldn’t be surprised if any book I could get for my Kindle would also be available for my iPad, and vice-versa. For those who are concerned about being stuck with Amazon’s growing, yet limited supply of titles, don’t be alarmed, there are many services and online publishers that provide content in Kindle format. You can also have books converted very easily.
Searching the Store - Although I haven’t played around with it too much, I think I’d have to give the iPad with iBooks and the iBookstore the edge as far as searching robustness is concerned. The Kindle gives you a single field to begin searching their store. You can narrow your results after the initial search, but it would be nice to be able to search for books by the author Hokkaido and not have to weed through all the books about the location Hokkaido first. Slight advantage iPad.
Bookmarking/Annotating - They both have the ability to bookmark, although it’s better implemented on the Kindle. As far as I know, the iBooks application doesn’t have the ability to annotate.
Organizing - Kindle recently added the Collections feature, which allows users to sort books into named groups. iBooks for the iPad already had this feature.
Both devices read native PDFs, give you the ability to adjust font sizes, and have an auto rotate feature for portrait or landscape orientation.
My bottom line is although the iPad is a lot of things, it doesn’t quite stack up as an ereader and I probably won’t use it as one except in a pinch. I read a lot, and my eyes really appreciate the e-ink display of the Kindle. The Kindle is nothing but a reader, but it’s a very good reader.
My girlfriend has a Nook and she loves it. The ability to lend books shouldn’t be overlooked, because if a friend has a Nook (or even the Nook iPhone app I believe) and they recommend a book to you, they can lend you their copy for two weeks. That’s an awesome feature, and I think** Zs****ofia** was being strangely dismissive and silly about that. You also get the ability to go to a Barnes & Noble cafe and read any book they offer for free for an hour. each day. It’s a cool way to test out interesting books you don’t want to buy beforehand, and you can get an hour on EACH book you try.
All that said, I want to point out that I found navigating her Nook to be a bit of a pain (girlfriend disagrees). The battery life isn’t nearly as good as the Kindle, either. You can play Chess and Sudoku, but I don’t know if the Kindle offers that. Book selection is probably equal. To me it seems to come down to the Nook having the better specs and features/technology, but the Kindle being easier to use. I would get a Nook, were I buying one of the two, today.
In reality, the awesomeness of this feature is mitigated by only being able lend a book one time.
Kindle has a try before you buy feature as well, but you can try as many books as you want, as often as you like. For example, I can download previews of 20 books within 5 minutes. Also, I can use this feature anywhere. The limitation with the Kindle in this regard is the preview is only the first 5 to 10 pages of a book, which is plenty of content to determine if you really want to buy the book after all.
No, you can’t play games on the Kindle and, all things being equal, that’s not a feature that would tip the scales in favor of the Nook for me.
Because it’s once, for two weeks, you can’t use it yourself for that time, etc. It’s something they can advertise as a great perk that really isn’t all that great.
What we do with the Kindles, my boyfriend and I, is to share an account. That way we can both read, at the same time, anything we’ve got. Obviously that won’t work for just friends, but it works very well for us.
ETA - I don’t know about the Nook, but with the Kindle you can get a free sample of any book Amazon has, at any time. I use that in lieu of a list of books I keep meaning to read - just have a bunch of samples to remind me.
Right, but if you have a Kindle you have the Amazon-provided program built in. The e-book in question is already in the proper format, you’d just have to not turn on wireless while you were reading it to avoid it being deleted. And if you forgot, you could just put it back on the Kindle via USB (from your computer). Your bookmark wouldn’t be saved, but it would still be the same readable version, no?
Only if you connect to their Whispernet service. If your wireless is disconnected, which mine is 99% of the time, there’s no way for them to delete anything. You can restore your backed up books via USB without connecting to their service, so there are ways to protect your content.
With the free Kindle-for-Ipad app from Amazon, does that erase any Kindle advantage in terms of book availability? Still have the physical characteristics to consider?
What is the trend for public libraries and e-books in terms of formats?
I ordered a Kindle for my wife a week ago. It is pretty neat, and Amazon were selling them for $109 refurbished, which pretty dramatically crossed our price threshold. The screen is very impressive, it appears intuitive to use, and it very comfortable and lightweight. It seems like a pretty good replacement for physical books, although I personally still enjoy building up a library.
We looked at the Nook a while ago in the actual store, and weren’t impressed at the time. The software seemed quite flaky with a few aggravating bugs. They may have fixed that since then, so I’d still give it a try in the store.
When you loan a real book out, you can’t use it yourself for that time—but you can loan out as many books as you want, for as long as you want, to whomever you want.
I’m not going to give up real paper books any time soon. After all, I already own plenty of books I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, and then there are plenty of others I want to read that are either unavailable or more expensive in electronic form.
Still, I have been sorely tempted to buy myself an e-reader of some sort, for the following reasons: (1) it’d make it easier to carry a bunch of books with me when I’m away from home, and (2) it’d give me a convenient, easy, portable way of reading free books (e.g. from Project Gutenberg) and other electronic documents. So I’m reading this thread with interest as I debate which, if any, to buy. And I still have a couple of questions:
That little color touchscreen on the Nook looks like a wasteful, frilly distraction. Is it, or is it actually useful for anything?
How easy is it to read things like PDF files, plain text files, etc. on the Kindle (or on other devices, for that matter)? What do they look like on its screen?
Is there any significant difference in availability of content for the different devices? What, if anything, could I read on one but not another?
How big is are the screens, compared to the page of an actual book? Would I have to keep “turning the page” annoyingly often?
The Kindle apparently has some ability to connect to the internet, which, as far as I’ve been able to figure out from researching, is currently free but which they could charge extra for or discontinue at some time in the future.
Is this correct? Can/do people use Kindles to read online content like Wikipedia or text-based blogs? Could/does anyone read/post to the SDMB from a Kindle?
The browser for the Kindle is not really usable for heavy duty stuff. It’s more of an emergency thing.
However, again, once you loan a book to someone, you can never loan that specific book to anyone else, which makes this feature quite unlike loaning real books, which you can loan out over and over.
Speaking for the Kindle, reading PDFs is great. It looks like the original PDF, with the same level of quality as the original. The only downside is if there are color images in the PDF the Kindle displays them in greyscale.
I think, at this point, Amazon probably has the largest inventory of titles but, ultimately, I believe all platforms will be able to access all titles.
I have the Kindle DX, so my screen is quite large. I have my font size set so that the frequency of turning the page is the same if I were reading a printed version of the book. It’s actually less bothersome to turn the page on the Kindle than a real book, as all it takes is a single click on the side of the device.
You can subscribe to certain blogs via the Kindle and have the content presented to you daily in Kindle format, or you can use their Experimental feature, which allows you to browse the web. Navigation in their browser is kind of a pain but it gets the job done.
Yes, but I don’t recommend it. I’ve actually managed my Gmail email account through my Kindle. Again, it works, but man, it’s no fun.